Vita Brevis

by Ruth Downie

  As they approached the Vicus Sabuci, an even worse fear gripped her. What if someone had left another barrel outside the door?

  They turned the corner. A group of women with shopping baskets were strolling away along the arcade, blocking the view. Tilla held her breath. They passed the point where the barrel had been left, and she gave thanks out loud before she could stop herself. When her husband asked her what was the matter she said, “It is nothing,” because indeed it was. Nothing! There was nothing there in the shade of the arcade.

  The body had been taken away. The priest had purified the apartments. There was no new barrel, and there was no lost wandering spirit to haunt them. She must put all that behind her now. It occurred to her that there were no patients waiting, either. She hoped other people would also be able to put the body business behind them. It had not been a good start after all.

  Phyllis was coming down the apartment steps as they passed. She pointed to the slaves in surprise and mouthed, “Three?”

  Tilla gave a vague shrug and a smile as if it were a mystery to her too, and hurried indoors.

  Her husband was already giving orders to the skinny Brigante. “I want you on duty just there, outside the door,” he said. “Stand straight, take messages, and don’t let anyone in unless my wife says so. If anyone tries to deliver a barrel, report it to her straightaway.”

  The man mumbled, “Yes, master,” as though he were asked to watch out for barrels every day and had grown weary of it.

  Tilla said, “Why? Where will you be?” but her husband was not listening.

  “Look encouraging,” he was saying, “and try not to put the patients off. If we don’t get paid, you don’t eat.”

  “Patients, master?” The Brigante seemed to have woken up at last and was eyeing the scarred surface of the operating table.

  “We are both healers,” Tilla explained.

  Suddenly everything went dark. She staggered backward. Her husband shouted. She crashed into the table and hit the floor. There was something big and bulky on top of her. She could hear the frightened cries of her baby.

  “Mara!”

  Someone dragged the mattress off her.

  “Mara!” She pulled herself to her feet.

  “She is safe!” called the slave woman, bringing her forward. Mara’s arms were outstretched toward her mother, who took her and quieted the crying. “It is all right, little one. Mam is fine. Nobody is going to hurt us.”

  The Dumnonii boy was standing in the corner clutching two mattresses and looking confused. The Brigante and her husband were gone. Tilla rubbed her bruised hip. “What happened?”

  Narina said, “That Brigante threw his bed at you and ran away.”

  While Tilla was still digesting this, her husband reappeared from the street, breathless and shaking his head. “Lost him down an alleyway,” he said. “I’ll get a slave finder to pick him up.” Then, glancing at the other two new arrivals, he said, “Anyone else frightened of doctors?”

  The Dumnonii looked blank. The woman said, “No, master,” but her gaze too was darting around the surgery like that of a nervous animal.

  “We’re not going to ask you to help with operations,” her husband assured them.

  The Dumnonii was still holding on to the mattresses and looking from one person to another. Tilla recognized that expression: the one where you hoped you would work out what was being said before it became obvious that you didn’t understand or, worse, before you got into trouble because you had missed something important. She guessed the seller had trained him to answer the questions a buyer was likely to ask. “Narina,” she said, “there is a jug of fresh water in the kitchen. Please pour us all a drink.”

  Moments later everyone was clutching a cup as if they were all at some sort of awkward party. Her husband was issuing orders. “Narina, my wife will tell you what your duties are. Esico, I want you to clear up in here. Roll up the loose bandages. Collect all the empty bottles and jars and boxes together and give them a good wash and a scrub clean, and wipe down all the shelves. Sweep the floor with damp sawdust, then fill as many lamps as we’ve got oil for. When you’ve finished that to my wife’s satisfaction, she will give you enough money to go to the baths for a cleanup and a decent haircut and shave. And at some point you need to work out where you’re going to fit your bed into the surgery tonight.”

  Tilla opened her mouth to point out that the dealer had surely made everyone wash before the sale and there was nothing wrong with Esico’s hair, then realized that since there was not much for an unskilled helper to do, getting rid of him for a while was no bad thing.

  “Back from the baths straightaway or there’s no supper,” he told him. “Got that?”

  The lad looked puzzled. Tilla said, “His Latin is not good.”

  “You’ll have to explain it to him. I’ve got to go out.”

  “But where—”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He almost rushed out without taking his medical bag: She had to call after him to remind him. She repeated the orders to Esico in a tongue he understood, adding, “When one of us tells you to do something, you answer, Yes, master or Yes, mistress.”

  Instead of obeying, Esico raised his chin. If they had not checked in the marketplace by speaking to him from behind, she might have thought he was deaf.

  “Well?”

  “These things are women’s work.”

  “They are the tasks you have been given.”

  Esico squared his shoulders. He was a handspan taller than her, and she forced herself not to take a step backward. “In Dumnonia,” he said, “I am the warrior son of an elder.”

  She felt something tighten inside her chest. “In Brigantia,” she told him, “I was many things. But neither of us is at home now. I have done my best for you. If you don’t do as you are told, my husband will send you back to the dealer. Now, what do you say?”

  The pimply chin rose even farther. “I say I do not take orders from a traitor.”

  “Very well,” she said, turning away so he could not see her face. She must not tell how she had slipped away from the Roman camp to tend Brigante warriors during the rebellion. The master and the mistress of the house must be united in front of the staff. “We have no use for a fool here.”

  “You can take your big mouth and your lazy arse somewhere else!” called Narina’s voice from the kitchen. “When you have gone, there will be more food for the rest of us.”

  “And we have no use for a woman with too much to say!” Tilla snapped. There was silence from the kitchen.

  This was not going well. One slave had run away, one was insubordinate, and the only one who might be useful thought she was running the house. For a moment Tilla wondered if they could send both of these back to the dealer. Then she felt the weight of Mara on her arm and reminded herself what it was like to manage alone. And then she remembered the terror of being a new slave in the control of strangers.

  She put her head around the kitchen door. The bed had been neatly laid out in the corner. Narina paused from arranging kindling under the kitchen grill, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head. “I am sorry, mistress. I should not have said it.”

  Tilla knew she should remind her that a slave should speak only when spoken to. Instead she said, “Look at me.”

  Narina turned. The light from the window caught the track of a tear down one cheek. The woman had now spoken out of turn twice, but the first time was to take her new mistress’s side against that big wrongheaded lump in the other room, and the second time was to apologize. Tilla said, “I am sorry also.” That was probably the wrong thing to say to a slave too, but it was out before she thought about it.

  “Thank you, mistress.”

  “You are a long way from your people, Narina.”

  “Yes, mistress.” Narina sniffed, groped inside the folds of her tunic for a cloth, failed to find one, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

  “Why are you in
Rome?”

  “My master brought me from Londinium to his home,” she said, “but his wife does not want me in the house.”

  It had been a mistake to ask, of course. Everyone had a story. Even Esico, probably, although she was not going to let him tell it. Not yet.

  “I will work hard, mistress.”

  “And can you really cook?”

  “Yes, mistress. Can I ask something?”

  Tilla held out a hand to receive the words.

  Narina looked around the kitchen. “Where is the food?”

  Tilla followed the woman’s gaze. She had forgotten all about the shopping. Her spirits sank as she realized she would have to go to Sabella’s again, and Sabella was bound to want to talk about what had happened to the barrel with the man inside. Then she saw the expression on Narina’s face, and remembered: Standing in front of her was a servant who was waiting for orders. “Tomorrow, you will shop and cook,” she announced as if she had planned it. “Today, when it is time, you can fetch us all something from the bar next door.”

  Out in the surgery, Esico added two more empty bottles to the snaking line of containers he had created on the workbench before stepping back and trying to melt into the wall at her approach.

  “Very good,” she said, looking at the bottles. “We will forget what happened before, because you are learning the Roman tongue and you did not understand.” And because she knew that if it were one of her brothers standing there, he would have behaved in exactly the same way. It was no use asking for an apology: No honorable warrior would apologize to someone he saw as a traitor. “Here, when we ask a slave to do something, what does he say?”

  He said, “Yes, mistress.”

  “Good. There is one more thing I need you to know. A healer’s work is private. You will not speak to anyone of what you hear or see in this home or of any of our business.” When he did not reply she said, “You know from your family about not saying things in front of the Romans. Around here, they are all Romans.”

  Esico cleared his throat. “Even the master?”

  “The master is a Roman but he is one of us. Now you can get on with your work.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  If it were her brother, he would be secretly lonely and afraid. “Esico?”

  He looked up.

  “In the house shrine there are some leaves from the oak tree at home. It is not Dumnonia, but it is the same island. You may pray to your own gods here.”

  Esico shifted awkwardly. “I do not think my gods can hear me over the din in this city, mistress.”

  She went into the kitchen, took Mara from her new minder, and held her very close, inhaling the soft baby smell of her and trying not to think about the goddess who protected mothers and babies being so far away across the sea and deaf to her calling. Then she said, “Something strange happened here yesterday, Narina, and I want to tell you myself before you hear any nonsense from the neighbors.”

  Narina said, “Was it the man in the barrel, mistress?”

  Tilla blinked. “Who told you?”

  “The slave dealer, mistress. He said if we misbehave, that is how we will end up.”

  22

  Passing Sabella’s bar, Ruso was startled by a cry of “Doctor!” from behind the counter. “I want a word with you!”

  He could tell from the tone that the word was not going to be a friendly one. Heads turned to follow his progress between the tables, and he recognized the man from the amphitheater crowd again just as Sabella added, “About that body.”

  Until that moment, he had entertained a fond hope that he might escape being known as the doctor whose wife found the body in the barrel.

  “How’s your poor wife after her shock, Doctor?” A woman he didn’t ever remember seeing before had raised her hand to attract his attention from three tables away.

  He changed very well to “Recovering, thank you,” just in time. It would have been even worse to be the doctor whose wife found the body in the barrel and didn’t mind a bit. Well, she is foreign.

  Finally reaching the refuge of the counter, he did his best to mollify Sabella with an order for spiced wine, and asked if they could talk somewhere quiet.

  Sabella bristled. “Well I’m not going to say it in front of the whole bar, am I?” Clapping his cup down on the counter, she shoved open the door farther along and called to someone, “Come out and serve, will you? I’ve got the doctor here.”

  A younger and slimmer version of herself appeared, wiping sweat from her forehead with a corner of an apron. “Is my hair all right?”

  “As it’ll ever be,” Sabella told her. “Make sure you count the change properly.”

  She stood back to allow Ruso into the sweltering atmosphere of the kitchen before pulling the door shut. Then she grabbed a cloth and shifted a couple of bubbling pans along the grill and away from the hot coals.

  “The body,” Ruso prompted, feeling the need to take some sort of charge here.

  Sabella flung the cloth down onto a table. “My husband does you a favor getting rid of it,” she said, “and what happens? Your posh friend goes right over our heads and complains about him.”

  “Accius? I don’t think he meant—”

  “We’ve had visits and inspections and I don’t know what, the scribe’s owner from two doors down is threatening to move him out of the shop, and now my husband’s been told to explain himself. If he loses his job, you’ll be sorry.”

  “I will,” Ruso agreed, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down the small of his back. The atmosphere in here was like the steam room at the baths, only far less congenial. “To be honest, if I’d known what I was taking on here, we’d never have come. We’ve already had a visit from a debt collector.”

  “My husband’s got enough to put up with in this place with the tenants. He doesn’t need dead bodies cluttering up the place and he doesn’t need the street cleaning department going over his head to Horatius Balbus.”

  “I’m as keen as you are to put an end to all this. I think we need to talk to Doctor Kleitos.”

  Sabella sniffed. “If I knew where he was, I’d be begging him to come back.”

  “My wife is saying the same thing.” She wasn’t, but it seemed like the right thing to say. “To be honest, I don’t think he wants to be found. I can’t say I blame him. He’s probably afraid he’ll end up in a barrel himself.”

  Sabella looked at him suspiciously. “He never had any bother before this.”

  “He seems to have covered up his debts very well,” he agreed. “I expect he didn’t want to upset his wife. Do you know if there’s any family he might have gone to?”

  Sabella supposed any of Kleitos’s relatives would be back in Greece. “But he was a slave for years, and you know how it is. They don’t really have family like us, do they? Anyway, he didn’t know anything about that barrel. They were gone before it arrived.”

  Ruso blinked. “Were they?”

  “Otherwise they would have answered the door, wouldn’t they? And that old feller with the limp was there knocking for ages.”

  He raised both eyebrows and waited.

  “Just as it was getting light,” she said. “Him and a boy.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “‘Delivery.’”

  “Anything else?”

  “He said he’d be back later.”

  “You don’t know which side he limped on, do you?”

  Sabella stared at him. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing really,” Ruso admitted. “He can’t have known what he was delivering, or he wouldn’t have hung around.” Recalling the sight of the man limping away under the arcade, he thought the weakness was on the left. That narrowed it down, but not a lot. There could be several hundred men like that across a city of a million people, and besides, if the limp had been caused by only a minor injury, it might have vanished by now.

  The door opened, and Sabella paused to address another, smaller black-
haired child who had staggered in with a rattling pile of crockery and a mercifully cool draft. “Only six high on the shelf!” she ordered. “How many times? And mind those cups!”

  Turning back to Ruso, she said, “If I find out where Kleitos went, I’ll tell him we all want him back. In the meantime, any more trouble and you’re out. And if your patron goes running to Horatius Balbus with that, I’ll tell him why myself.”

  Ruso was back in the street enjoying the fresh air when a small voice from behind him said, “They went on a vegetable cart, mister.”

  “The doctor?”

  The small version of Sabella who had delivered the crockery nodded, and then glanced ’round and stepped back into a doorway where they could not be seen from the bar. “I looked out of the hole in the shutters when it was dark.”

  “If it was dark,” he said, “how did you know it was a vegetable cart?”

  The girl sniffed. “I could smell the cabbages,” she said.

  23

  Ruso stopped. There was a barrel protruding from a doorway not fifty paces ahead of him. He crossed the street and continued on the other side, relieved to see that the door belonged to a snack shop and not a medical practice. Even so, he made a mental note never to eat there. Then he strode out under the arch of the old Esquiline gate, past the grand gardens that someone had told him were built up over old burial grounds. The eccentric tomb of a baker still remained, an odd structure of concrete cylinders and circles that must have been in place before the city walls were expanded to enclose it. Beyond the nearby gate, he chose the left-hand fork and followed the Praenestina road past a series of competitively elaborate tombs whose occupants would never have wanted to sleep this close to the traffic when they were alive.

  He wondered if this was the route Kleitos’s family had followed in the dark.